Lives at Sea
by dreadlockedpencil
Summary: Jack's lost his ship again. He'll need the help of a pirate crew to get it back. Captain Milo Shanks just happens to have one. While on the ship, Sparrow meets a girl, but she's got some availability issues. Not that he knows that. Or particularly cares.
1. Chapter 1

**All right. I know this is the second time I've remade this story, but I recently read over it and found a load of mistakes, as well as confusion as to who was speaking. So I've fixed it. As you can tell from the length of my hiatus from this site (almost five months now), I have given up looking for the book with this story written in it. And now I know there's no way I can update this story weekly, so I'm going to say at least monthly. I've refreshed my creative juices (oh you love that word) and I'm beginning to write up the next few chapters. I've also changed up the plot a bit more.**

**So there you have it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own it.**

It was the middle of the day when he saw her.

She was standing in the crow's nest, her hand shading her eyes from the bright Caribbean sun. Her skin was as dark as Anamaria's and her hair the same, fanning out in the strong wind and framing her strong features.

"Who is that?" he asked Captain Milo Shanks, a hint of awe in his voice. The old Captain chuckled.

"Why do you need to know?" he replied in an amused voice. "You've no chance with her, if that's what you're after."

Jack shrugged, grinning. This sounded like a challenge.

"We'll see. No woman can resist the charm of Captain Jack Sparrow." He watched in amazement as she swung down from the crow's nest, on a thick piece of rope, landing several yards away from Milo and Jack.

"I taught her how to do that." said Milo proudly as she walked up to them.

"We're coming up on another ship." she declared to the crew of The Estrangement.

Jack flashed what he thought was a devilishly handsome grin at her and whispered to the older captain.

"I'll bet she likes the looks of me already."

"She's not that kind of woman, Jack." warned Milo, pulling at his grey beard.

"Stop talking about me." the woman warned as she walked past the two, pointing a calloused finger at them.

"Ears as sharp as anyone's." chuckled a crew member as he walked by quickly, getting ready to hoist the sails.

Jack could feel his face burn slightly, a strange thing indeed.

"What be the ship's name?" enquired Milo.

"Darling Joan." she said happily, her face beaming as she strolled away. "That be her name."

Milo looked directly at Jack, his eyes gleaming brightly. Jack's face was contorted in deep thought, as if he was planning something.

"Try as hard as you like." Milo suggested. "It won't work."

- - - - - - - - - -

_(One week earlier)_

- - - - - - - - - -

"One more." roared Captain Jack Sparrow, motioning for another bottle of rum. He and his crew were all heavily inebriated, celebrating another successful defeat of a navy vessel.

Mr. Gibbs slapped the captain on the back roughly. "Tell us ano'er one, Jack." he said heartily. Jack hiccuped and giggled, sloshing his fresh bottle of rum all over himself as well as the bar. Obviously he'd had more rum than usual.

"You remember Elizabeth, don't you? Lovely lass, crazy about me," Jack slurred happily. "Hear, hear!" yelled a drunk crew member. "Ta." agreed Jack. "Well after Barbossa marooned me an' her on that island, you'll never guess what she did."

The bartender rolled his eyes as Jack told the story of how Elizabeth had gotten drunk and come on to him, complete with Jack's additional details of how he 'bed' her, ("You sly dog." congratulated a passing man.) then came up with the genius idea to signal passing ships by creating a smoke signal, heroically sacrificing his rum in the process. By the time he was half finished, a nearby group of men who were also in the bar had wandered over and begun to listen to the tale. And by the end of his long story, a rather large group had been attracted, almost everyone in the bar listening to Jack's supposedly true stories.

The bartender didn't mind. It was good for business.

"Another!" called out an interested bystander when Jack was done, raising his glass into the air insistantly.

Jack grinned happily, and he prepared to tall of his first escaped from being marooned. "One more." he said, slamming his hand on the bar.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The ocean shifted smoothly under the hull of The Estrangement. Captain Milo Shanks had almost finished his nightly rounds. This meant he had walked around the ship and asked Dawson several times if they were going the right way. Milo was and always had been terrible at directions. He was sure that they were heading south, to Port Dominique, but he was just making sure.

"Dawson." he boomed, strolling over to his first mate. "Are we going the right way?"

Dawson laughed, rubbing his black beard lightly. "Yes. We're on track. "

Milo nodded

"Captain," called Ava, coming down from the crows nest carefully. "Don't worry. Dawson won't let us go the wrong way. He's trustworthy."

The captain blushed slightly. It was one thing to admit being bad at directions to his best friend, who already knew. He'd thought Dawson was the only one who'd known. Obviously he was wrong.

"Well, yes. Uh..." Milo struggled to think of how to change the subject. "How's Marie?"

Ava laughed. "She's fine. It's just a severe case of seasickness." Milo nodded. "She'll get her sea legs yet."

"Right. It's only been a month since she's been on the ship." Dawson said, joining the conversation. "If I remember rightly, it took Ava over a year to get her own."

Ava laughed and shoved her old friend. "I'm sure it took you a while too."

"It took him a day." Milo replied. Dawson rubbed his mustache proudly. "And I was born with sea legs."

Ava smiled and stretched her arms. She didn't doubt that her captain had spent his lifetime on the sea. "I'm going down to bed."

Milo nodded. "Say hello to Marie for me."

"I will."

- - - - - - - - -

Daniel Ezra, the bartender of the Far Moon, located in Port Dominique, was bored. It was somewhere around five in the morning, and all was quiet. Everyone who had been drunk the night before was either asleep, gone, or in their inn rooms with their "company."

Daniel had never been good with idleness, and wondered why he hadn't gone back to his room for the night several hours earlier when his shift had ended. But his reasons were clear.

As he mopped the filthy bar counter with an even filthier cloth, he thought of the stories that the pirate had told. "Surely they were only ramblings." he said aloud to himself, brushing his pale blond hair from his fair face. But his mind insisted differently.

"A pirate's life must be so exciting." Daniel said, his tone dropping as he saw one customer, asleep on a table, shifting their position.

He wished to be a pirate. He knew many people did, but he felt that he needed to do this. In the spur of the moment, he made his decision, formulating a rough game plan in his head and rushing up the stairs and into his inn room.

His wife, Dorothy, was sleeping soundly in their dirty inn bed. Dorothy was a successful seamstress in this Port, making more money in a day than Daniel made in twice that time. Together they were saving up to buy a sugar plantation in the east, but for now, they lived in the inn.

Grabbing an empty sack, Daniel began filling it with his own belongings, contemplating what he was about to do. It was selfish, in a way, for him to be leaving his wife behind to go gallivanting after pirates. But on the other hand, if he joined a crew, he'd be able to earn money, more money than he'd earn at his poor job at the bar.

After some time, he finally finished. He turned back in the doorway to admire his slumbering wife. She was beautiful. Her curly red hair tumbled to her waist, beautifully set against her fair skin, her eyes as blue as a summer's night. 'She will be all right.' Daniel insisted to himself in his mind. Leaving a note on the table, he kissed his wife's forehead one last time.

With that, he ran out of his room, the inn, his former life.

Out to seek adventure, the terrible cliché that was life. Adventure was what he knew that he truly longed for. And he knew just who to go to.

Captain Jack Sparrow, the most adventurous pirate in the Spanish Main. Or so it was rumored.

**A/N: Well there you have it. Chapter one. I corrected a few things. I hope you enjoyed it.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own it.**

Confused and filthy, Jack Sparrow woke to the sounds of the shrieking gulls that flocked around his head. "Blasted birds." he heard someone mumble several meters to his right.

Swallowing to rid the bad taste in his mouth, Jack rose from what appeared to be a road and struggled to remember his bearings. This wasn't easy, as he had no bloody idea of anything that had occurred in the last night.

"What did I do?" he muttered to himself, trying hard to remember. "We were in a bar, celebrating. I had some rum, told a few stories, and then had more rum."

The streets before him swam together into indistinguishable bits of colour as his hangover hit him full force. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed, cringing in pain over the agony in his head.

It was all coming back now. As the pain gradually subsided, he could remember what had happened. He had drunk much more than usual, come outside, walked a bit, and then passed out in the streets. Not bad for a weekday. He'd done less in a day.

Rubbing his eyes, Jack stood up unsteadily and looked around.

As suspected, the rest of the crew had seemed to have done the same as he had, and passed out. Drool was seeping out of Gibbs' mouth unattractively.

Jack spun around several times, only to fall over with dizziness. "Bleedin' ground won't stay still." he grumbled.

Eventually he figured out where he was.

Jack and his fearsome crew were lying directly on the dock.

The sun was just beginning to raise, its yellow beams striking the multicoloured sky.

There were only two ships that had been anchored and tied, one called the Crimson Sunrise, and the other Twilight.

With a surprising realization, Jack noticed what was missing from this picture. An all too familiar picture…

"Where's the Pearl?"

-----------

"Land!" yelled Ava, pointing North-West at a medium-sized island. It was several leagues away, but she could make out the colourful houses that dotted the island's coast through the salt-spotted telescope.

With a calculated leap, Ava jumped from the crow's nest and clung to a rope, swinging onto the deck.

Captain Milo patted her on the shoulder warmly as the rest of the crew scuttled around, preparing to drop anchor.

"Port Dominique?" asked Ava quietly. Milo nodded.

The young woman went below deck, to the sleeping quarters of the crew.

"Port Dominique." repeated Captain Milo, surveying his crew as they ran every which way, yelling incoherently at each other.

Chaos.

Just the way he liked it.

-----------

Below deck, Ava observed the sleeping young woman before her proudly. The teen's brown eyes fluttered open as Ava touched her cheek. She smiled weakly, and then leaned over to throw up into a small bucket beside her secluded bed.

Ava winced at the sound of her vomiting. "Any better, Marie?"

Marie nodded, wiping her mouth with her dress sleeve, brushing her dark brown hair out of her face.

"Is it my birthday yet?" Ava smiled.

"Not quite. One more week." she answered.

"Oh, God." groaned Marie, lying back down. "I hope I'm not still seasick by then."

"That makes 20 of us then." commented Ava. Marie wrinkled her eyebrows.

"20? Don't you mean two?" Ava shook her head and handed her a bruised green apple. "Me, you, the crew and the captain."

Marie snorted. "They just want me to be able to scrub the decks again."

"Don't be silly." frowned Ava, punching Marie on the shoulder playfully. "Now rest up. I want you better by morning, aye?"

Marie nodded weakly. One week until her birthday. She was turning seventeen.

Although she was currently sixteen, Marie looked hardly older than 13. She took after her father, mostly, with her fairt skin and dark hair and eyes.

Marie knew the basics of sailing, but she'd never really gotten the hang of it. Usually she cleaned and cooked, or studied with Ava.

She'd only been on the ship for a month, and she'd been fine for the first week or so. And then the seasickness had hit. It had started with strong weakness, and then her face had paled considerably. At first Shanks had thought she was catching scurvy, but once she'd started vomiting, they were relieved to find that it was only severe seasickness.

While the thoughts of her seasickness were hard to ignore, she was more focused on her upcoming birthday. Her father had promised that once The Estrangement had reached Britain, she and her mother would come live with him. If, that is, if her mother agreed.

It was a comforting thought, and she didn't doubt her father's promise.

He'd never broken one before.

----------

Jack yelled in frustration and anger. Once again he'd lost his beloved ship. And it was all thanks to his bloody rum.

"You cause me a bloody lot of grief." he muttered to his fresh bottle.

After he learned of the departure of his ship, Jack, who was no stranger to this situation, had gone to the nearest tavern and bought several bottles of rum. Then, he'd retired to an abandoned stoop and began to drink.

His crew, not wanting to disturb him, had left for a tavern inland, and left Jack alone to contemplate what to do next.

"We'll have to get a ship." said Jack to himself aloud, already planning his search.

"We can't buy one, not enough money. There are no real ships to commandeer."

There were only two ships docked at Port Dominique, but they were useless, rich people ships. They were meant mostly for pleasure cruises, and not for long journeys, and not for fighting, as there were no cannons aboard.

"I'll find work aboard a ship." he decided gradually, balking at the thought.

That would require a ship to be leaving this godforsaken island.

While Port Dominique was a beautiful island, it was a sleepy town, and no one ever really left.

"Ho, there." said a deep voice, breaking the Captain's thoughtful silence.

"What do you want?" Jack snapped. He wasn't in the mood for a conversation.

"You're Captain Jack Sparrow?" Jack turned towards the voice, wanting to get a better look at the person who was questioning him.

It was a young man, no older than 25. He had blonde hair that reflected the sun. His eyes were a watery blue and he had tanned skin, but a gaunt face.

"I want to travel with you." Jack laughed mockingly.

"Do you know anything about sailing?" The man shrugged. "Enough. I learn very quickly."

His voice had acquired a pleading tone, and he looked as if he were about to cry.

"Please let me travel with you."

At the moment Jack couldn't care less about the boy. All he needed at the moment was his rum and a plan.

"Fine." he consented distractedly. "But if you do something wrong, be it on your own head."

The man's gaunt face broke into an appreciative smile, exposing his bleach-white teeth.

"I'm Daniel Ezra." he declared, extending his hand in a friendly fashion.

Jack looked hard a long at the youth.

"Welcome aboard." he said finally, ignoring the hand. He picked up two new bottles and clinked them together in toast. Then he handed one to Daniel and took an especially long swig from his own.

"Welcome aboard."

**A/N: Okay!**


End file.
